Margaret Mead Notes - Tales from the Jungle Margaret Mead 2...

Tales from the Jungle: Margaret Mead
• 2 men interviewed 60 year old woman in Samoan Islands: Fa Ah Pua
 Mead’s reputation a lie?
• America’s first woman of science: well-known
 middle class, academic
 father: economist/mother: sociologist
 racism/cultural differences: biological, genetically, sociologically inferior
 anthropologists supported this
 savagery: dark skin
• Franz Boas: towards nurture
 adolescence: culturally construct, varied
 proof that nurture also has a role
 Margaret Mead: student of Boas
 chosen to do study of adolescents in Samoa [Polynesia]
• August 1925: Mead arrived in Tu Tu Ila, Samoa
 different from paradise the Mead expected
 more westernized
 Mead looking for somewhere more uncivilized’
 had to learn the language [not normal of those times-usually learn about
grammer]
• relocated to remote island
 loneliness & culture shock
 might have to live with host family, but lived with an American naval family
 drawbacks to living with natives [decrease efficiency]